Desi Authors

We have authors whose words flow smoothly and we have writers who have an ornamental way of presentation. We have seen the Victorian flavor of Nirad C Chaudhuri and smoothness of mother daughter duo Anita and Kiran Desai. But I am here to discuss about a third category named the desi authors. They are the one who brings the colloquial English directly to literature. In my grown up years I used to ask a question to my teachers on a regular basis, ‘why can’t we literally translate the words spoken in our mother tongue in English?’ It sounds stupid, but has some meaning today if I look at the writings of our desi authors. The literal translation I meant was about the spirit of the words translated directly. I thought we can express better in our mother tongue and the Victorian language cannot pour the same amount of emotion in the exact way we present in our language. And here we have a breed of new age authors writing effortless English that doesn’t sound jarring to ears, using simple words that leads to easy paced reading and sometimes almost a literal translation of the colloquial that keeps the emotion intact for the desi readers! More so, we have monologues and dialogues written completely in local language along with English to give that extra flavor. However, the concept in not new. We have seen bilingual films before. We have heard Hindi songs intermingling with Bengali words and stuffs like that. But the literary world is seeing this sudden surge of desi authors only in last 10 years. What more? Their writings have inspired Bollywood. I can name many in the list of authors in the category. Chetan Bhagat is one of the pioneers. Two of his books (5 point someone and one night at call center) has already been made into movies and the new one (revolution 2020) is already considered for a movie. Ashwin Sanghi’s best selling book ‘Chanakya's Chant’ is going to be a movie next. Lack of plot in the celluloid has made concerned people sit and take notice of the new age authors who writes ‘local’. It’s not that we didn’t have authors who writes local before. Khushwant Singh, R K Narayanan and Jhumpa Lahiri are among others who made us read their work with an uncanny ability to localize every subject. They stood firm in the face of flowery writings from Vikram Seth, Amit Chaudhury, or Rohinton Mistry for that matter. One striking fact among them is the age. The average age of them is late 30’s. But the situation now has changed. We have authors started writing from the age of 19-20, someone a student, and some has just started working in a field thousand miles away from literature say IT or investment banking. This is no ‘fad’. It is here to stay. The demand is huge and supply is limited still. The English speaking audience has smelled the aroma of local writing. The phenomenon is unlikely to die down. I guess, you won’t oppose the new surge unless a staunch follower of British English!